Kaldero

What's should we know about Kaldero?

Press Up's new melting pot of cuisines was cooked up in record time after the group announced they were closing Wagamama on South King Street with immediate effect at the end of September. The press release for Kaldero flew in a week before opening, and the only thing that interested anyone was that Bahay's Richie Castillo was attached to it, along with two other UK-based consultant chefs who'd worked on the menus for now shuttered Press Up restaurant Rice Chinese, and their Indian concept Doolally. Neither made major waves on the eating scene here, and neither chef actually cooked your dinner - the non-descript Press Up kitchen team does that.

When the press release landed we mistakenly thought Castillo was the chef, with input from the other two occasionally flying over, and thought what a brilliant pairing for both. Small time chef with big kitchen talent gets backed by a group known for bland food in a beautiful setting. Book us in. But when we got there and saw no sign of him in the kitchen, we quickly found out that all three chefs were only drafted in to create the menu, and wouldn't be manning the stoves. Suddenly it all felt very Press Up, and any excitement was gone in a poof.

Where should we sit?

The narrow, high ceilinged room still harks of its Wagamama heyday, although the kitchen has moved from the back to the left hand side. It's dimmer and moodier with sleek booths replacing wooden benches, but anyone who spent their youth making a veggie katsu curry and a beer last for two hours will find the basement room very familiar.

The tables for two on the right side of the room are far too petite - if it's not full you'd be advised to ask can you trade up for more space, especially if you plan on sharing dishes. The sleek, red leather booths in the middle are where it's at, with the high tables at the front feeling a bit removed from everything and a bit too close to the stairwell.

What did you eat?

A mash up of Chinese, Indian and Filipino dishes (there's one Malaysian too) which feels a bit food court-esque, a bit please-all, and like there hasn't been enough attention given to any one cuisine - so far, so normal for this group. It's not in sections either which might make things confusing for anyone who wants to know the origins of what they're eating. There are 15 small plates and six large, with sides like egg-fried rice and masala fries at the bottom. It's a menu for sharing, and with three of the large plates priced from €33 - €39.50, you’ll probably want to.

We started with dynamite lumpia (Filipino), long green chillies stuffed with pork mince and smoked scamorza with a sweet and sour honey dip. They were pleasant enough, but dull enough, with no sign of the scamorza, and no danger of us coming back to order them again.

Next from the Filipino hymn sheet came tofu kare kare, in a bland, under-seasoned peanut sauce, with tofu whose batter had lost its crispiness. The added aubergine was the best thing about it, and the dish went back to the kitchen unfinished.

Onto China and the sticky pork "gula melaka", which our server gushed was an amazing choice. The only thing amazing about it was the brix levels in the sauce - this should be in the dessert section. There's caramelised ginger, crispy leek and gogi berries in there too, but when your mouth's coated in this much sugar it's hard to detect any nuance.

Onto India then and Amritsari fish in chaat masala spiced butter with mint chutney. The fish tasted far from fresh, with tough curled up bits where flaky chunks could have been, and the mealy batter gave the whole thing a texture verging on unpleasant.

The best of the lot was the burrata chaat, possibly because it was more assembly than cooking, with chickpea salad, tamarind chutney, sev and yoghurt sitting under a good ball of creamy burrata. There are so many more authentically Indian versions of this dish they could be serving, but why let that get in the way of fashionable balls of cheese.

After that underwhelming stream of mediocre dishes, there was a chance to save things with our single large plate - a sizzling seafood clay pot. They'll be channelling Thai-inspired Kiln in London surely, some of the most photographed, lusted after clay pots in Europe? Sadly it seems they haven't been.

The sauce was sizzling, while also sickeningly gloopy, thickened beyond belief with what looked like corn flour, and for the princely sum of €34 we got three prawns (rubbery and presumably from the freezer), two scallops (one brutally overcooked), and a single piece of seabass (maybe the rest dissolved). The barely cooked courgette, pepper and onion slices were pedestrian at best, lazy at worst. Is there a camera somewhere filming our reactions? No? You're actually charging people this? For this? Oh okay, yeah cool.

We were desperate to get out of there by this stage but dessert was the noose holding us to the table. We only planned to try one (how much torture is too much torture) but after telling our server we were surprised (to put it politely) at the lack of seafood in our main for the top shelf price, she insisted on bringing us a panna cotta with caramelised cornflakes, chocolate shards (like a Cadbury's flake) and calamansi pickled kumquat. It was the best thing we ate all night. Creamy with proper wobble, sweet tangy citrus, chocolate - finally something with flavour, and flavours working together.

The 70% chocolate with coconut, kiwi, and chilli and lime syrup on the other hand was another "who would want to eat this?" moment. It's like an extremely thick ganache, ruining the delicate slices of golden kiwi on top, and had no sign of any chilli or lime honey until our server told us it was all around the side and we had to scrap it in to our tastes. Alrighty then. It's hard to imagine anyone finishing anything this rich, and we'd wager it's a dish that produces a lot of waste.

What about drinks?

As in the other Press Up venues, the cocktails are where it's at, with a menu devised by The Vintage Cocktail Club's Gareth Lambe, and staff who can execute. A pandan ginger fizz and a chrysanthemum tequila spritz wouldn't have been out of place in some of the city's better cocktail bars, but at a price tag of €14 you might not want to stay on them all night.

The short wine list doesn't have much to excite, but a glass of Carl Koch Riesling was very pleasant and worked well across many dishes. There's no beer on the menu, but they do have some basic brands if you ask.

How was the service?

When you order five small plates and one large for sharing, and you're sitting at a very small table, you don't expect everything to land at once, but after four dishes were sat down at once with our server going back for the fifth, we had to call a halt to proceedings. Two, maybe three plates at a time, for the love of God - inevitably some of it hit our lips cold. Our server was lovely and very helpful with all any requests, but her effusiveness about every dish we ordered felt a bit scripted once we started eating and realised that none of our choices were in fact that good.

What was the damage?

€148.60 before tip for a meal for two with three drinks. We'd have preferred a yaki soba, some gyoza and a plum wine for a fraction of the price.

What's the verdict on Kaldero?

With all the talk of a UK-based investor talking over Press Up's hospitality division in September, we thought the group might finally have turned a corner and realised the potential it had to be the Ennismore or the Caprice Holdings of Ireland, finding killer concepts across the world and executing them to perfection in high end rooms alongside first rate drinks. If they'd backed Richie Castillo alone to open Bahay in one of their premises, we'd have an opening worth talking about. Kaldero is not that.

Surely there are chefs in this group with talent, with harboured loves for handmade pasta; Singaporean street food; Sri Lankan hoppers, anything but these copy and paste flavour voids on a plate. And if not, can't they go and find some? And have them actually cook the food, rather than committing to a week then sailing off to their next gig?

When we were leaving we met a group of young Filipinos in the lobby upstairs. They had come excited after hearing about a new Filipino restaurant in Dublin. Did they like it? Much shaking of heads. "Food's not very authentic. Lacking flavour." We told them to follow Bahay for updates on where they might appear next.